New statistical approaches for analysing foodwebs and species distributions

Identifying how species are distributed over the landscape, interact and self-organise into foodwebs are central goals in
Ecology. This project aims to provide innovative new Bayesian modelling tools to improve our understanding of species
distributions and their foodweb networks. It is expected to develop a general framework for extending species
distribution models to deal with multiple species, incorporating both their interactions as well as errors in detection. The
project also hopes to develop a robust Bayesian methodology for partitioning complex foodweb networks into
ecologically relevant compartments as there are currently no reliable methods to achieve this. Both projects are of
relevance to conservation policy and management of threatened species.